So I think the book reader probably will know that the author doesn't have years of battle tested experience but understand that the book is meant to be a good way for a beginner to get up to speed and get going with the topic.
This is akin to a layman writing a book on International Klein Blue, but having no idea of what other colors are out there. It's a form of a "blind leading the blind" situation.
Neither The SPDY Book nor Dart for Hipsters was meant to be a definitive guide on their respective subjects. They are 150 page intros and, as you say, probably well suited for this approach.
For Recipes with Backbone, we aimed for the intermediate / advanced audience. Again, I agree that I probably could not have gotten there in 3 months on my own. For that, I relied heavily on my co-author (Nick Gauthier), who is battle tested with Backbone.js. So, again, I think we are in agreement.
That said, even the intro books are living books. I plan on refreshing and adding as the technology evolves and I as become battle tested (I'm working on edition 1.1 of The SPDY Book now). So over time, I hope to get closer to the ideal tome on the subjects.
Do you, kind of like Sal Khan (of Khan Academy fame) feel curious to know more & more stuff, & then want to share your knowledge & understanding with the rest of the world, by writing books ?
Context : my comment above http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3904024
There is also a selfish aspect to it. By writing the best book that I am capable of, I learn this stuff much better than I would by playing around with it for a day or two.
Motivations and results feed each other and (hopefully) produce great results.
But more ephemeral topics benefit greatly from experience. When I was in the military, I benefitted greatly from the experience of my NCOs and much of what they passed on to me where things that would have been very hard to put into a book or discover through any process other than experience.
But I suspect most technical topics fall into the former category rather than the later.
But then by the same argument, would you not trust Sal Khan's Khan Academy videos, since he himself has experience in only a few of the many areas, he researches & then makes educational videos about.
I would tend to agree with you : as a rule, people need to be experienced in a discipline/area to produce high quality content in that discipline/area. People like Sal Khan are the few & rare exceptions to this rule.
For the publisher, if know the author do not have professional background, should not publishing their book. Because that means risking a lot.
However, I have serious doubts about the merits of writing a book about a subject intricacies and philosophy of which you have not yet had the chance to distill through the lens of experience.
The method may, perhaps, work for simple recipes, how tos and other procedural knowledge. I really don't think it would work for anything in or above the intermediate range of content on any meaningful, commonly deep topic.
Just imagine whether the "Mythical Man Month", "Code Complete" or "Innovator's Dilemma" could have been written with this kind of approach.
I don't know about others but when I read a book, I sometimes realize the presence of an unavoidable slight bias towards believing the author and respecting his conclusions, that is unless I am already deeply knowledgeable about the subject and have my own strong opinions. It better be the case that the author is in fact trustworthy on the subject.